A taste of the old world

My parents have been talking about this wonderful Japanese restaurant they've tried and wanted us to go, so this past Saturday, we went out for lunch there. My parents, wonderful as they are in their own way, have no blinkin' sense of direction, and with DH driving, this made for an interesting excursion to start. We had the address, but an old map and on our map, the road didn't exist. Good thing mom knew the approximate streets to where this restaurant was, but it was still a bit of like we were exploring the new world.

What our parents didn't tell us, maybe because they thought it'd be a nice surprise or something (lord knows what goes on in their minds) is that this restaurant is not in a commerical area, but rather is a part of the dining room of an assisted living complex for elderly Japanese people. This meant, of course that they aren't going to be serving what you and I would normally go out to eat when going for Japanese. Oh sure, they had tempura on the menu, but the samples they had out were mostly fried this and fried that, with a panko breaded exterior. The menu was a hand written one pager with about 10 items on it, and like I said, almost everything was fried. Mom ended up ordering udon with chicken off the placard that sat at the table, DH had the salmon patties plate, and dad and I each had a different fried seafood platter. With the exception of mom's dish, the rest of the platters came with a mixed green salad, potato salad and miso soup. We also ordered some tempura starter.

As this isn't a normal restaurant, you can't expect it to function like one either. They brought out our meals in drips and drabs, and I was halfway through one of dad's fish pieces (thinking, mistakingly, that it was my platter) when mine finally came out. The tempura, which we had thought would be a starter came at the very end.

All in all, it was very filling, DH's plate had two large salmon patties on it and between that and the salad, it filled him up alot. I couldn't even finish my plate there because I had to finish off the tempura. Not that that's a bad thing, and the price of all the dishes was about $7-$8, very reasonable.

Afterwards, dad said how much he liked this place because it wasn't all sushi, which he didn't like. Personally, I would much rather go out for a sushi meal, and that's why when I go out with the folks, we go for Chinese, something we can agree on.